Should He Stay or Should He Go?

We've had a visitor in our barn almost every night for the past couple of months.  He's leaving his calling card - piles of poop all over the hay.  It looked like possum poop to me.  Funny thing is, there were no chickens missing.  Possums kill chickens.  When they do, they leave most of the carcass behind.  It's always frustrated me because I think, "If you're gonna kill my chickens, eat them.  Clean your plate.  Don't kill them and leave most of the body behind.  That's very wasteful."

So our culprit was not killing our laying hens, but was in the barn.  Why was he coming in the barn?  I got to thinking about it and discussing it with Tricia and we both noticed that we haven't seen ANY rats in the barn.  We researched and found that possums DO eat rats.  So perhaps this possum is doing us a favor and cleaning out the rats.  But there's another variable.  We know that there is also a big rat snake in the barn taking care of the rats, too.  We were' leaving him (or her) alone until it goes in the henhouse, then it must die.

In the photo below, you can see the hole that the possum has made to enter into the corner of the northwest corner of the barn.  If you zoom in, you can see several of the many piles of possum poo.

What to do?  In the words of a song by The Clash back in the 80's, "Should he stay or should he go?"  If he goes, then our rat problem will rebound, especially with wintertime coming and the snake won't be hunting until it warms up.  If he stays, there will come a time when the rat population is diminished (like it is now) and the possum will shift his prey to one of the laying hens in the hen house.  We can't have that.

So with that decision made, I baited up my cage trap with some Pedigree Dog food.  Possums are the easiest animal to catch.  In two days, I had a big, hissing possum in the cage.

Benjamin was home, so I had him grab his rifle and go put him down and compost him.  We will keep an eye on the rat population in the barn.  Hopefully, in the possum's absence, we won't see a population explosion.  Possums poop on the hay and the animals don't like that on the hay.  I wouldn't either!  However, rats poop and pee on the hay and the animals don't like that either.  It's tough to balance these things out!

Mystery Scat in the Barn

 Well, we have an uninvited guest that sleeps overnight in our barn.  Very secretive and mysterious.  He (or she) leaves behind a 'calling card.'

Either in the feed troughs or in the hay rack or on top of the hay bales, the critter is not shy about pooping.  This is not good.  The cows and the goats eat that hay or they eat out of the feed trough.  We can't have this kind of thing going on.

So I got out our trusty cage trap.  A trap I've used numerous times to catch more possums than I can count (and even the neighbor's cat).  It's a simple trap to use.  I bait it with dry dog food and set it.  The bait is placed in a bowl just beyond the pad.  Once set the pad is in the up position.  Once the critter enters the cage and walks toward the bait and steps on the pad...  Well, the trap is sprung, closing the door behind it. 

Except for the fact that despite setting the trap many times, the critter is too smart and the trap never catches it.  The door never closes.  This weekend I will re-double my efforts and set additional traps.  Hopefully I'll be able to catch the varmint and report next week the identity of the puzzling pooper.

Making Biochar for the Garden in 2019

We have live oaks, water oaks, and pecan trees in our yard and pasture.  They are forever dropping limbs.  We have to pick up sticks in the whole yard before we mow the grass.  There is rarely a time that we don't have at least two 'burn piles' stacked up.  I'm so glad that we live in the country and can burn things when we need to.  We like to sit around the fire pit in the fall and winter and just gaze into the fire.  It's so relaxing.

Time to get rid of this burn pile by the tree.

If you've followed us for any time at all, you know that we are steadfast and focused about improving soil health.  We compost everything that will decompose.  Benjamin caught a fat possum in a trap last night and finished him off with his .22.  He's digging a deep hole in the garden now to "plant" Mr. Possum - Kind of like the Indians buried a fish with their corn planting...

Well, we're in year 3 of making bio char, and that's what we'll be doing in the post today.  Bio Char is also called Terra Preta or "black earth."  Long ago in the Amazon basin, people used terra preta as a soil amendment.  They buried smoldering sticks and organic materials into the soil.  The benefits include the boosting of soil fertility, improving yields, increasing the soil's capacity of water retention, and housing beneficial soil organisms.

Well, let's make some of that!  How do you make it?  Let's get started.  First start a fire.

Come on baby, light my fire

After the fire has burned a little while - enough to burn into coals, but not long enough to turn to ash, stop the process by quickly soaking down with a water hose.  Spray until it no longer smolders.  You can take a shovel and chop into charcoal-sized pieces.

Charcoal

If you looked very closely at the pieces of burned wood, you'd see microscopic, porous holes.  When incorporated into the soil, these become little condominiums for beneficial soil microbes.  I just keep burning and spraying, making batch after batch of bio char until my burn pile is gone.  It is replaced with a mineral bucket full of bio char.

My old trench shovel works perfectly for this.

Now you might think we're done, but if you amended this into your soil now, you'd have problems.  Bio char acts as a sponge and soaks in all soil nutrients and holds them.  If you'd plant into soil with un-inoculated bio char, your plants would be stunted and sickly.  It is best to pre-charge your biochar.  Here's how we do it.  We mix in cow poop.  It is full of bacteria that will inhabit the porous spaces in the bio char.  I mix it all together real good.

Stirring the Poop

I add a layer of bio char and then a layer of poop.  A layer of bio char and then a layer of poop.  Repeat until you fill up the bucket.

When I've exhausted the cow poop supply, I fill the poop bucket with water and shake and scrub the sides down.  Then I pour the poop/water slurry on top of each of my buckets of pre-charged bio char and let the 'poop soup' filter through the layers.

I'll let the buckets sit for a few weeks and fester.  You don't want to rush things.  When the time is right, I'll work this into the garden soil.

Bio char is stable and rich in carbon and can stay in the soil for thousands of years.  I am hoping the Lord returns soon, but if He tarries, we'll continue building healthy soil and will continue being good stewards of His Creation.  Making bio char is just one more way to accomplish that.  God Bless!

2018 Meat Birds - 1 Week Old

We're one week into this year's edition of the on-going experiment of growing our own poultry.  We learn something new each year.  Sometimes when we try to incorporate things learned, we solve old problems and new ones crop up.  Here's a brief narrative of what has transpired in the last week:

The fowl (err... foul) smell emanating from the brooder lets you immediately know that the little boogers are eating a lot.  We add fresh shavings to the brooder, but it doesn't take them long to soil the fresh shavings.  The portion of cattle panel over the top of the brooder is a semi-protective measure that we added to help dissuade our cats from eating our birds.  In the first two days we lost 8 birds and then one more on the third day to bring the death count (so far) to 9.  Not good!

Since last week, we've added a gallon sized waterer in addition to a smaller one and a second feed trough.  I would think that we'll be adding a third trough and perhaps a second waterer as the chicks need for feed (and water) increases.  Although not captured in the photo below, we've expanded the size of the brooder.  Maybe I'll illustrate how we did this later this week.

I randomly selected an averaged sized chick and put him on our kitchen scale.  First, a sat a scrap piece of paper on the scale to protect it from poop.  The chick is at an awkward stage of growth with his cute fuzz being replaced with tiny feathers.

He weighs in at one week old at 7 ounces.
2017 birds at one week old weighed 7 1/2 ounces.
2016 birds at one week old weighed 8 ounces.

Although the weight is a little off over previous years, I'm not going to worry about it.  We have some time to make that weight up - about 8 weeks, to be exact.  Oh, I wanted to show you the baby feathers I spoke of earlier:

Here they are, the first white feathers growing out on the wing tips.  We will post again next week and compare notes on growth and the life and times of a meat bird.

"Gastro" From Astro

Disclaimer: If you are eating breakfast while you're about to read this and find that talk about poop is repulsive, you may want to put this to the side for a while and read this while you aren't eating.

Astro is Clarabelle's little bull calf that was born last Tuesday.  He's just a little guy, and we want to make sure that he is getting adequate nutrition.  He is Clarabelle's first calf and although she does show motherly instincts, we wanted to check on him.  He is very secretive about when he nurses on her and we've only seen him nursing a few times.

Yesterday evening I brought Clarabelle into the barn to give her some dairy ration mixed with alfalfa.  Little Astro was following her into the barn and suddenly stopped and arched his back.  Yep, you know what is coming...

With one look, I knew that Astro was fine.  He has gotten a good start from Clarabelle's colostrum.  Can you see how that was confirmed?  If not, I'll zoom in.  (Please forgive me)

That nasty looking yellow, slimy poop looks odd.  It looks like he must be sick, but he's not.  Actually, it is just the opposite.  He's healthy and has gotten a good belly-full of Clarabelle's colostrum or first milk.  Colostrum is a special thing that mammals produce just prior to delivery.  It is full of antibodies to give the calf a good head-start in protecting against disease.  It also is higher in protein than milk.  It is vitally important for the calf to nurse and get the colostrum within 6 hours of delivery and definitely within 12 hours.  The cow will continue producing colostrum for about 72 hours and then the milk comes in.

There are numerous benefits for humans to drink colostrum, so we always capture some for us to drink.  We have several quarts of it in the fridge now.  I find that it does not taste as good as milk and has an "oily" consistency or mouth-feel.  Sometimes we freeze some so that if we ever have trouble with a calf unable to nurse, we could thaw it out and bottle feed the calf.  Astro's yellow poops are the evidence that we needed to prove that he got the colostrum he needed from Clarabelle and that he'll grow and be a healthy bull calf.

Building The New Chicken Tractor (Part III)

We had two previous installments where we showed the construction of our new chicken tractor:
Building The New Chicken Tractor (Part I) and
Building The New Chicken Tractor (Part II)

In Part II we finished building the tractor and we showed in Moving Day For The Meat Birds how we moved the birds into their new home.  Today I'll show you the last accoutrement of the chicken tractor that transforms the tractor into a 'mobile home' - WHEELS!

The design is not mine, but one that my friend Dale fabricated.  We pulled four of the inflatable tires off of the old chicken tractors and using a pivot on the axle that I'll show in the following photos, this design is versatile and genius!  Below you'll see the tractor in the down position, similar to when your car is in PARK.  In this case, the wheels are up and the chassis of the chicken tractor is resting on the ground, allowing no critters to get underneath and eat the chickens.

In this next position, you can see that the handle to the wheel assembly is in the horizontal position.  I call this the "Jacked Up Monster Truck" position.  In this position the chassis of the tractor is about as high as it will go.  This will come in handy when trying to roll over obstacles like fire ant mounds that are ubiquitous in the pasture.

In the next photo, you can see that the handle of the wheel assembly is at roughly a 45 degree angle.  There is a finishing nail nailed into the top of the handle and a chain with a hook on it fastens it in the DRIVE position.  Absent fire ant mounds, this position is perfect for rolling across the pasture.

Each day we move them to fresh grass so that they are able to forage on the grass while not sitting in their poop.  This also keeps the grass fertilized across the pasture.  In the DRIVE position, there is a small gap that makes it hard for a bird to fall underneath and get run over.  You still must be careful, though.  There is a rope on both the front and the back of the tractor so that you can pull it in either direction.  I pull while facing backwards so I can keep an eye on the birds.  They don't move too fast, you know.

The next photo simply shows the design of the off-set axle and you can get a better visual of how the pivot works.  Pretty cool, don't you think?  The birds are admiring the engineering of their mobile home.

The next and final photo shows a couple of things.  First you can see that we've fastened a blue tarp to the chicken tractor.  This provides some protection from the sun and rain, while still allowing airflow.  I simply attached it by using zip ties through the grommets around the wire fencing that makes up the outside of the tractor.  Next you can see the waterer that sits atop a blue tub and gravity feeds water via tubing into the bell waterer that is suspended from the 1x4 that runs along the top of the tractor.  Finally, you can see the "Trail of Smell" behind the tractor. The chicken poop initially kills the grass, but the grass comes back with great vigor, fed by the rich chicken poop.

And that, folks, is the new chicken tractor.  We have had some severe weather lately, including strong wind and hail, and Tricia and I discussed the possibility of wheeling the tractor, along with the chickens, into our garage to be safe. Fortunately, we didn't need to do that.

In summary, the new design of the chicken tractor is fantastic.  We will likely build another one that mimics this prototype design exactly.